Mother decides to leave anti-vaxxer movement—but not in time. All 7 children get whooping cough

Tara Hills has written a piece for thescientificparent.org chronicling her decision to become an anti-vaxxer and then return to believing in vaccinations. She pens the piece from quarantine because all seven of her children have recently been diagnosed with whopping cough.

We’d had a games night at our house in March, my brother-in-law had a full-blown cold, so when the kids started with a dry cough a few days later I didn’t think much of it.  But a week after the symptoms started the kids weren’t improving, in fact they were getting worse.  And the cough. No one had a runny nose or sneezing but they all had the same unproductive cough.  Between coughing fits they were fine.

Then a few days later at midnight I snapped. My youngest three children were coughing so hard they would gag or vomit. I’d never seen anything like this before.  Watching our youngest struggle with this choking cough, bringing up clear, stringy mucus – I had heard of this before somewhere.  My mom said I had it when I was a kid. I snapped into ‘something is WRONG’ mode.  READ MORE

11-year-old has criminal and felony charges against him for kicking trash can in school

1903

Kayleb Moon-Robinson is autistic. This school year is sixth grade for him—at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia. In the fall, when Kayleb was still 11 years old, he was admonished for bad behavior when he kicked a trash can.

A police officer assigned to the school witnessed the tantrum, and filed a disorderly conduct charge against the sixth grader in juvenile court.

Just weeks later, in November, Kayleb, who is African-American, disobeyed a new rule — this one just for him — that he wait while other kids left class. The principal sent the same school officer to get him.

“He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” said Kayleb, a small, bespectacled boy who enjoys science. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”

The cop took Kayleb, in handcuffs, to juvenile court. The cop filed two charges: second misdemeanor disorderly conduct and felony assault on a police officer. Seriously. But, according to The Center for Public Integrity:

US Department of Education data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity show that Virginia schools in a single year referred students to law enforcement agencies at a rate nearly three times the national rate. Virginia’s referral rate: about 16 for every 1,000 students, compared to a national rate of six referrals for every 1,000 students. In Virginia, some of the individual schools with highest rates of referral — in one case 228 per 1,000 — were middle schools, whose students are usually from 11 to 14 years old. READ MORE

South Carolina argues to Supreme Court that it can discriminate against gays AND women

Anybody else worried about how seriously some of these guys are going to take this argument?

South Carolina wants to be able to continue to ban gays and lesbians from marrying each other. They want to do that so much that they filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court that they should continue to be able to do so. In it, they make an "originalist" argument that if the Constitution is read just as its drafters understood it, gays can be discriminated against because women can be discriminated against. Mark Joseph Stern at Slate has all the crazy.

Here’s the gist of South Carolina’s fascinatingly sexist argument. The state wants to prove that the 14th Amendment—which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to every "person"—was not intended to displace state marriage laws. And what did those laws look like at the time? One major feature: In many states, married women were not permitted to own property or enter into contracts and had no legal existence apart from their husbands. According to South Carolina, the framers of the 14th Amendment explicitly preserved the rights of states to deprive married women of the ability to function independently from her husband. This right to deprive married women of basic liberties, South Carolina argues, is enshrined in the 10th Amendment and is not at all undercut by the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equality.

The crux of South Carolina’s brief, then, is this: If the 14th Amendment permits discrimination against married women, it surely also allows discrimination against gay people who wish to wed. In fact, according to South Carolina, the 14th Amendment forbids only racial discrimination, leaving states free to disadvantage women and gays in any way they wish.  READ MORE

NYT: Anti-Obama Attacks are Getting More Disgusting

From The New York Times Editorial Board in a piece titled, "A New Phase in Anti-Obama Attacks":

It is a peculiar, but unmistakable, phenomenon: As Barack Obama’s presidency heads into its twilight, the rage of the Republican establishment toward him is growing louder, angrier and more destructive.

 Republican lawmakers in Washington and around the country have been focused on blocking Mr. Obama’s agenda and denigrating him personally since the day he took office in 2009. But even against that backdrop, and even by the dismal standards of political discourse today, the tone of the current attacks is disturbing. So is their evident intent — to undermine not just Mr. Obama’s policies, but his very legitimacy as president.

It is a line of attack that echoes Republicans’ earlier questioning of Mr. Obama’s American citizenship. Those attacks were blatantly racist in their message — reminding people that Mr. Obama was black, suggesting he was African, and planting the equally false idea that he was secretly Muslim. The current offensive is slightly more subtle, but it is impossible to dismiss the notion that race plays a role in it.  READ MORE

The police shooting video Chicago has paid $5 million for us not to see

Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by Chicago police

On October 20, 2014, something so egregious, so awful, so unjust took place on the streets of Chicago that the city, already in a deep deficit, is paying a family $5 million for us to never see evidence of. On that night, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, surrounded by officers who were waiting for a Taser, was shot 16 times.

It was filmed on a dash cam, but for the past six months, Chicago has done everything in its power to keep that video private. Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times, the family attorney, Michael Robbins, said:

“I certainly expect that the officer will be indicted, and not just the officer, but any officer, supervisor or lieutenant who took part in covering this up and justifying what cannot be justified. This was an execution of a young man that should have been— and could have been—avoided."

After the shooting, a spokesman for the police stated that Laquan lunged at the officers and caused them to fear for their lives, but the family and everyone who has seen the video insists Laquan was doing quite the opposite, and was slowly walking away when one single officer hit him with 16 different shots all over his body. Otherwise, if the video showed a brave officer in imminent danger, it's highly unlikely a grieving family would be about to receive one of the largest settlements in the history of Chicago.

The FBI is now investigating the case as well.  READ MORE

5 Walmarts close for 'plumbing issues' all over the U.S., suddenly lay off 2,000 employees

Very strange news from the land of Walmart:

Employees of a Walmart in Brandon that abruptly closed Monday were among more than 2,000 employees nationwide who learned almost simultaneously they were being laid off. In a nearly identical manner at every store, Walmart corporate officials visited the five locations, called an impromptu meeting in the back of the store and told employees that the stores would be closing that evening.

The locations include stores in Florida, Oklahoma, Texas and California. Even stranger is that Walmart doesn't seem to be ready to do anything about said "plumbing."

According to Hillsborough County, Florida, Walmart didn’t notify the county’s permit department either. No one there has heard a peep from Walmart about any major repairs.

One thing is known, these "plumbing issues" are pretty considerable.

A Walmart official also told 10 News repairs haven't started yet because they still need to organize the store after so many shoppers came out to take advantage of closing deals. She added each of these five stores closed, there have been upwards of 100 plumbing or pipe incidents in just the past two years. That, and that alone, is the only connection, according to Walmart officials.

Or there haven't been any plumbing issues?   READ MORE

Indianapolis Business Journal Reveals The 'Real' Reason WIBC Dropped GOP Extremist Rush Limbaugh

This past Monday I wrote a Daily Kos article about the Republican talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, being dropped, after 22 years, from the Indianapolis radio station WIBC. Many other news /opinion sites covered the story, as well as IBJ (Indianapolis Business Journal). Most of the stories basically said the move was a simple change in direction:

Officials for WIBC parent Emmis Communications this month notified Los Angeles-based syndicator Premiere Networks that it would not extend its deal to air Limbaugh’s show.

Here's where the IBJ piece was a little different. Emmis' local market manager, Charlie Morgan, said the mega company's decision to drop Limbaugh was much more than a simple change - and they have been contemplating this move for 18 months.

While Morgan expects some WIBC listeners to be “hugely disappointed” by the change, he said losing Limbaugh could open up the station to more advertising opportunities.

"There are some—primarily national—advertisers that refuse to air commercials during Limbaugh’s show, Morgan explained. "

Emmis officials began notifying its advertisers of the change Monday.

And there it is - bonafide proof once again, that the boycott against Rush Limbaugh and his sponsors is not only working, it's remarkably effective. It's changing the face of talk radio altogether. Right now the biggest problem with radio - is Rush Limbaugh. And the hundreds of thousands of Limbaugh boycotters couldn't be more pleased.

Advertisers can't handle the pressure and loss of customers. Most companies, other than those run by Republican Dittoheads, are avoiding Rush Limbaugh like the plague. This was not the case in 2012.

That year, self-proclaimed 'El Rushbo' enjoyed sitting on the king's throne of Conservative 'hate radio' with a plethora of large lucrative sponsors. That all changed after he called an unknown college student a 'slut' and 'prostitute' while she advocated for insurance-paid birth control at a congressional hearing. Once Limbaugh's rant hit social media and went viral, huge sponsors like Ford, GM, McDonald's, Subway, Carbonite…began to pull their ads immediately after seeing the public's outrage.

Yes, the good old days are long gone for Limbaugh, though his camp begs to differ and continues to make lame attempts to derail the boycott Limbaugh used tojoke about. Also, his PR team is now blitzing search engines like Google with 10 or more RushLimbaugh.com stories per day - from the same show. Guess they need those page views to generate revenue because it sure isn't coming from sponsors.  READ MORE